From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 23 1996 - 10:25:58 EST
At 6:38 AM 1/23/96, Nichael Cramer wrote:
>Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>> Timothy Tow wrote:
>> > I'm posting this question to this list on the advice of a friend.
>> >I'm not on this mail list so please reply to me directly.
>> >
>> > I was re-reading the Odyseey and the Iliad, and I recall reading
>> >from some literary source that the expression of '10 years' in Homeric
>> >Greek was a colloquialism for "a long period of time."
>> > I asking this because if Homer's use of the expression '10 years'
>> >for the duration of siege of Troy is taken figuratively then his stories
>> >makes more sense chronologically then if it were taken literally.
>> > Then the Trojan War and all of its assorted aftermath events may
>> >not have taken over 20 years after all. Should I take the '10 years'
>> >expression literally or figuratively.
>> > Was '10 years' a common colloquialism for a "a long time" even in
>> >other Greek dialects?
>> I have never seen or heard anything like this. It is ironic for one not
>> overly inclined to be especially literal in interpreting the gospel to have
>> to insist the strong likelihood that ten years in Homer means nothing else
>> but ten years: [...]
>> Sorry, I didn't mean to rant and rave, but the 20 years is underscored
>> repeatedly in the Odyssey.
>
>More to the point, isn't it also the case (sorry, my Homer is my other
>office so I'm doing this from memory) isn't it also the case that the
>Iliad opens after _nine_ years of fighting. The war and subsequent
>mopping up goes on for a year or so after Akhellius' death (i.e. after the
>end of the Iliad) making a total of ten years. So unless "nine years" is
>also taken to be a colloquialism for a long time it would seem that Homer
>meant 10 years.
>
>But the original point --that of the "problems" of chronology-- is still
>an interesting one. When I took Homer in Gregory Nagy's course you can
>bet we asked about these things (my personal favorite was Akhellius
>leaving an infant son when he set off for Troy and by the end of the siege
>the son is leading troups into battle; for that matter if you work out the
>various personal ancestries and who-knew-whose-father at various times,
>the fact that Akhellius himself is present means that some of the other
>main charcters must be leading charges into the heat of battle well into
>their seventies and eighties).
>
>Nagy's response was that basically we are in Mythic time, something akin
>to the "dream time" of the Australian aborigenes. Literalness is
>something that can only be pushed so far in these cases. So perhaps
>there is something to learn here w.r.t. NT studies.
Yes, and there other weird anachronisms in mythic time also, like Herakles
being one of the Argonauts. There are times too when I wonder whether
Nestor didn't live through the whole span of mythic time (which, of course,
had no beginning and no end). And Helen, it would seem, has not aged one
bit when Telemachus goes visiting to Sparta in the Odyssey, after all she's
been through!
What a lucky fellow to have done Homer with Greg Nagy! Probably luckier
than I to have done Homer with John Finley.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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